stay
by the-anonymous-c
Summary: Nymphadora Tonks is new to the Order and is not yet accustomed to being an Auror. Or to Severus Snape, unluckily for her. Takes place after an Order meeting or somesuch thing. Not a pairing fic.


**a/n: I don't even know, guys. This is very run-on in style, and was very spontaneous in the writing to begin with. If you read, please review and let me know what you think. Severus Snape's pov, first person. Obviously, Harry Potter and the characters do not belong to me, I'm just playing around ;)**

"Stay, you can't be alone tonight," she says, and because there is no one around she pulls me toward the stairs and because there is no one around I do not pull away as soon as I might have.

"I have things to do," I say, and this isn't true but it could be, and she doesn't know it's not true because there's no way of telling and she's kind and not accustomed to being lied to her face.

"It's cold," she says simply, confused, I suppose, "we have plenty of spare rooms. You could use one. No one will have to know."

I think it odd that she says this, since obviously she would know, would have to know, unless I were to take up residence at random in one of the upstairs rooms here, which would be a foolish decision with perhaps an unwelcome outcome; who knows how many rooms Black traipses through drunk on rainy, cold nights like this when it is so easy for people, especially weak people with nothing to think about to get drunk and traipse around depressed and useless. I also find it odd that she touched me, and that this particular fact did not occur to me until now.

"Come on," she says, and takes my umbrella from me. She has decidedly become oblivious to my glare, and because she is holding my umbrella, which I need to keep from being hailed on, I follow her upstairs. I am going to leave, of course— get away from this tiresome house and these tiresome meetings with people who will suck you dry of information and shoot you suspicious looks in the process. It is as thankless as following an asinine young woman up two flights of musty stairs and down an equally musty hallway to get my umbrella back, and I suppose because I was thinking of Black, now I am thinking of getting drunk and of how she touched me. Why did she touch me?

And we have reached the door to one of the upstairs rooms, and she takes my traveling cloak and umbrella inside, and I let her, and then she says, "You're welcome to stay for dinner, you know. You never stay for dinner." And her voice grates into me, I have never realized how grating, how obnoxious, how cruel her voice really is, and when she comes out, still holding my traveling cloak in one hand, puzzled expression on her face, I say "Give me that. I am going now."

She seems afraid of me now, and she better as hell be, it is better that she is, and she goes to hand the cloak to me but I rip it out of her hands before she can, and turn around and go back down the stairs and out the door into the rain which hurts without an umbrella. I stand on the front step for a while and think about how much the rain hurts—it is certainly hailing, and unseasonable, too—and whether I should go inside and take my umbrella back, but then I hear footsteps behind me, behind the door, coming down the stairs and I leave, out into the rain, slinging my travelling cloak over my shoulder, not bothering to put it on properly because I can put it on properly when I am away from this place. But when I gain the distance I need I fail to put it on properly so forget the whole thing, because I am cold and angry and miss the time when a killing curse could solve this, god, that was like some sort of high, and I can't stop thinking about how much the rain hurts and about how she touched me, why did she touch me.

So I go umbrella-less, a safe distance away, and apparate to a place where the air is stale and makes me want to get drunk like Black on one of his worst days, but at least there are no people and it does not make me think anymore, at least not in a way that getting drunk cannot solve. When I am alone and dry and the rain cannot hurt me inside I think about killing people and about people and how ridiculous they are, and how if people were to just get the hell away from each other while they could, there wouldn't need to be any killing, no highs that shouldn't exist, but do.


End file.
